


Great, Great Minds Against Themselves Conspire

by katertotter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:39:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katertotter/pseuds/katertotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luna cares a little too much, she knows, and she loses more each time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Great, Great Minds Against Themselves Conspire

_This is a prayer for the wanting. This is a prayer for those in need._

Luna writes across Ginny's back with the feathered end of a quill every Tuesday afternoon. The feathers leave a queer, broken pattern along her skin, and the letters bleed together, but Luna knows every syllable. Ginny lies on silk and sighs the other way.

It begins as dinner plates, then under the table with stockings, and the bathroom of a posh restaurant against the basins with the door jammed shut by a rubbish bin. It ends up always behind Harry's back.

It gets easier and easier to fit in small spaces in many ways. Luna slips the silverware into her handbag on the way out as easily as she slips her smooth, small fingers inside of Ginny. The gasping around soft knuckles lying against her tongue and the tinkling of spoons is interchangeable in her mind.

It is like a game, really, that Luna knows the rules of all too well after three years, and she slips Ginny's finger inside her mouth and tastes herself there.

Ginny's thighs are braver than her convictions; they wrap around Luna's shoulders even when her eyes turn away. She's ashamed of this, of them, and Luna can feel it cold against the palm running up Ginny's leg. She leaves her hand along Ginny's stomach or her mouth around Ginny's nipple just a little too long, and she can feel Harry there in every flutter and breath.

Often, she wishes greedily that he would catch them. Ginny always kisses with her eyes closed, thinking of him, as her tongue feels too large in too soft a mouth, and Luna studies this. She doesn't understand.

 _This is a prayer for Tuesday teas. This is a prayer that I break free._

Hermione isn't home today, but the quill lying on the night table knows more than that, Luna thinks. The flat is cold, and silent, and filled with a breakability that Luna equates with Hermione, and the ink feels too hot somehow as it rolls between her thumb and index finger. She allows it to drip off, and is momentarily satisfied as Ginny groans into a pillow. The droplet rolls off Ginny's back and down a thigh. Luna laughs happily, but Ginny never bothers to turn around.

Luna cares a little too much, she knows, and she loses more each time. She doesn't go into work any more at all, and Ginny never mentions it. Much like everything else.

Every day is the same, but for Tuesdays, when Hermione swallows tea with her parents and Luna swallows Ginny with her tongue. A swirl, cursive capital Q, and a prayer for her salvation from this lie she calls a life.

 _This is a prayer for the broken-hearted. Love is a soft sigh against her thigh._

There's no real part of Luna left here any more, outside of Ginny, who won't stay inside her. So she curves her prayers on cream that barely rises as she whips it.

Ginny rolls away and pushes off the bed. She slips into strappy heels, and wriggles a black bra on, before sliding into a tight little black dress. All that butter and honey bleeding against black, and Luna frowns. She looks out the window over the river as Ginny slips out the door again.

Lightning falls thickly into the water and Luna wishes she couldn't swim.

 _This is a prayer for the lighthouse cracked by a crying sky. This is the call of a time to pay._

The dinner is to be a fancy affair, and Harry brings Ginny in on his arm proudly, both of them smiling and gracefully accepting congratulations on their engagement. Hermione walks ahead, calling out seating arrangements and organising everything in sight. Luna stills, forgotten and folded, near a coatrack.

The rain hits the pavements outside, and Luna walks slowly back out into it. She stands for minutes in the angry thunder and wants too much. Her hair sticks to her face, and her dress blows wet against her legs and breasts, and with a heart that hurts too much for choking on lies today, she boards a train home.

She watches days go under and she wonders when the shadows came so long. Bougainvillea vines across the library window now and she plays the piano for no one. There's silence left to ride away with, and she's misplaced her maps anyhow. She's been lacking conviction too long, and she's built her castles too high to outweigh this tide.

She's terrified of falling. But the ground is nearing every day.

 _This is a prayer for the shattered. This is a prayer for after a war._

Luna washes herself in bayou light. The smell of south is all around her, hot and heavy and jasmine-laden, and she escaped the blooming but not the blossoms. The tiger lilies bow in silent sorrow in the saddest shades of orange, and their black spots, like small hornets, swim so well across the pond, she finds.

She's tied to the tester of an estate bed in New Orleans, and a voice tells her to feed the birds. Only they can hear her pray. She thinks her wrists are bleeding, but she can't feel them any more.

His name is Julian, and he lives in the Quarter with a man named David, when he's not playing doctor in the District. She met him in a seedy club on Bourbon, where he poured her liquid, bubbling green till the world went dark. He's too tall, and too dark, and too familiar, and Luna is comforted that he has a cock. He cannot hurt her. She couldn't run to save herself now, so she screams, and she screams and she doesn't even want to be heard.

No. Not any more. Not now that the hornets have swam downstream.


End file.
